WPR13LA364 · Commonwealth 185
Commonwealth 185 · Accident: hard landing
From Skagit Regional Airport (BVS) to Skagit Regional Airport (BVS)
Event
- NTSB case
- WPR13LA364
- Event typeAccident: someone killed or seriously injured, or the aircraft substantially damaged (NTSB definition). Incident: an occurrence that affected or could have affected safety, short of that. Glossary
- Accident
- InvestigationHow far the investigation had got when the record was published: preliminary, ongoing, final or completed. Unknown where the source does not say. Glossary
- Completed
- API-reported fatalities
- 0 · all aircraft and ground
- Ground fatalities
- Unknown
- OperationWhat kind of flying it was, grouped by the rules it flew under: airline (US Part 121), air taxi and commuter (Part 135), general aviation (Part 91 and similar), military or government. Glossary
- General aviation
- WeatherVisual meteorological conditions (VMC): good enough to fly by looking outside. Instrument conditions (IMC): cloud or low visibility, flying by instruments. Glossary
- Visual Meteorological Cond
Commonwealth 185
- Aircraft type
- Commonwealth 185
- Category
- Airplane
- RegistrationThe aircraft's tail number, such as N12345 or G-ABCD. Registrations are reissued, so the same one years apart can be a different aircraft. Glossary
- N67045
- Operator
- Unknown
- Onboard fatalities
- Unknown
- Route
- From Skagit Regional Airport (BVS), Burlington, WATo Skagit Regional Airport (BVS), Burlington, WA
- Aircraft age
- Not recorded
- Flight rulesThe regulations the flight operated under: in the US, Part 91 (general aviation), Part 121 (airlines), Part 135 (air taxi and commuter) and others; for flights abroad, the NTSB's coarser commercial or non-commercial code. Glossary
- Part 91: General Aviation
- Phase of flightThe stage of the flight when things started to go wrong: standing, taxi, takeoff, initial climb, en route, maneuvering, approach or landing. Glossary
- Landing · flare/touchdown
- Defining eventThe single coded event the NTSB judges best describes what happened (records from 2008 on). Older records name the first occurrence in the sequence instead. Glossary
- Hard landing
- DamageDestroyed: beyond practical repair. Substantial: damage that affects the structure, performance or handling and normally needs major repair. Minor: less than that. Glossary
- Substantial
Cause areas
- Aircraft › Aircraft oper/perf/capability
- Personnel issues › Action/decision
Approximate · Coordinates as recorded by the NTSB; no uncertainty radius is established.
NTSB narrative
The pilot of the tailwheel-equipped airplane was landing in a 6-knot, 40-degree crosswind at the conclusion of a local flight. The pilot stated that, during the landing roll, a wind gust picked up the left wing, which lifted the left main wheel off the ground. The left main wheel then touched down hard, and the airplane swerved aggressively to the left. The airplane departed the asphalt surface and nosed over when it contacted the adjacent grass. During postaccident repair of the airplane, a mechanic reported that an interior footwell panel had dislodged and caught on the left rudder bar, inhibiting movement of the pedals. If the panel had been dislodged before the flight, it should have been observed both during a preflight inspection and during the flight. As the pilot did not report any resistance in the pedals before the landing, it is likely that the panel became dislodged as a result of the hard landing, which prevented the pilot from regaining directional control.
Probable cause
The pilot's inadequate control inputs during a crosswind landing, which resulted in a hard landing and loss of directional control.
Verbatim NTSB analysis and probable cause from the NTSB dataset
Sources
NTSB record WPR13LA364
- Event ID
- 20130808X74709
- Case number
- WPR13LA364
- Dataset
- full-current
- Source SHA-256
- 5cf380f0061817c0331a6b2d8cc7e0ee3a79bea469a1001dc5c10e56f35f5ab3
Source notes (4)
- Unreviewed is an editorial label, not an investigation status. API-sourced is not report-checked or human-reviewed. Explicit event totals are used without summing aircraft injury tables; onboard allocation is withheld. Unknown values remain unknown. The operation category is mapped from the NTSB-reported FAR part and has not been reviewed.
- Filled from the NTSB case API where the bulk record had no value: investigation status. Values present in the bulk record are kept.
- The date is the local date, which is the same as the UTC date the NTSB stores.
- API snapshot SHA-256: f38eeb95e7e3810f748a10836486271606c37a51619c2856ae533e45f2af1173; retrieved 2026-09-15T22:28:20.335Z.